I watched it, just had to be patient for it to connect through Quicktime 7. I missed the first couple of minutes. The actual link was above, you had to click “videos” from the link Nick provided. The talk was on science and religion, some statistics of believing scientists, definitions of evolution, and the “creation/evolution continuum” listed here

As a theistic evolutionist I appreciate how she critiques folks like Dawkins (“nothing but blind pitiless indifference” quote) and Shermer (quote about “standard scientific view” is “God had nothing to do with it”) who confuse philosophy with science.

As a theistic evolutionist I appreciate how she critiques folks like Dawkins (“nothing but blind pitiless indifference” quote) and Shermer (quote about “standard scientific view” is “God had nothing to do with it”) who confuse philosophy with science.

Hilarious! What exactly in evolution theory says that it is “nothing but blind pitiless indifference” and how isn’t the “standard scientific view” that found natural mechanisms describes evolution well and “God had nothing to do with it”?

If you inject religion into science by critiquing its implications in this way, it is you who confuse philosophy with science. Which is exactly what theistic evolution does, btw.

“What exactly in evolution theory says that it is “nothing but blind pitiless indifference”” - What exactly in evolution theory says that it is not “nothing but blind pitiless indifference”, of course.

Torb: “If you inject religion into science by critiquing its implications in this way, it is you who confuse philosophy with science. Which is exactly what theistic evolution does, btw.”

I can critique those implications since they are philosophical implications, not scientific. I freely admit theistic evolution is not a scientific view. It is a philosophical position that combines both God and science. But so is the view that evolution means “there is no God.” That too is a philosophical position not a scientific view according to Eugenie Scott, which was one of the points of her talk. She is right, Dawkins is wrong. We’ll find that out even more in Alister McGrath’s The Dawkins Delusion which was just published by SPCK.

I can critique those implications since they are philosophical implications, not scientific.

You don’t motivate why the first implication is philosophical. In fact, evolution theory implies that it comes down to contingency and stochasticity due to coarse graining. Both of these constraints have natural models in deterministic and probabilistic laws. If you try to inject god-in-the-gap mechanisms here, it is another theory that isn’t minimal. But we know that the minimal theory is enough.

But so is the view that evolution means “there is no God.”

That wasn’t the second implication. The second implication follows from the first above.

You are possibly discussing Dawkins argument that gods are improbable. That is another claim.